So, has anyone officially turned down a school's offer yet? I'm thinking about turning down my offer from Indiana, but I want to do a little bit more of an investigation of their department webpage before I'm sure.

So, anyone turn down any offers yet? Thinking about it? This is our turn to have the power after they kept us waiting only to crush our dreams.

Oh, and I'm sure admissionprof will be watching this thread closely; you know how excited he is about telling people to turn down offers.

I think I will most likely turn down one of my offers next week. However, I am reluctant to do so until I get some hard-copy information from the other schools on my list. Sorry to be so ambiguous, I got really paranoid all of the sudden that someone on the board was going to figure me out.

Perhaps it is terribly selfish of me, but I want to wait until I have the hard copies of the acceptance letters before I turn any schools down. After paying my dues and working hard at my crap school, this is a huge triumph for me and I want these letters to keep forever.

There are three schools so far that I'm pretty decided on rejecting, but I'm going to talk it over with my adviser and parents one last time before I do.

I completely agree that you should NOT turn down any offer unless you have an offer from a better place IN HARD COPY. With money included. It's unlikely you'll lose out, but don't take a chance. But once you have it, and you are certain, please don't wait.

Thank you for your letter on Feb 26. After careful consideration, Iregret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer mean assistant professor position in your department.

This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusuallylarge number of rejection letters. With such a varied and promising fieldof candidates, it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.

Despite MIT's outstanding qualifications and previous experience inrejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my needs atthis time. Therefore, I will assume the position of graduate studentin your department this August. I look forward to seeing you then.

ibbgs wrote:At the end of the whole process do we get to find out what school admissionprof is from. I would be very interested to know.

Never! And I don't think I've provided enough information for you to find out. Confidentiality is important on these blogs---and if I figured out who a particular student was, it would be highly unethical for me to "out" them. Similarly, if one of you figured out who I was, it would be unethical to tell anyone.

I've actually talked about this forum with a few other admissions directors (BTW, we often talk about process, but I've never talked about a specific student--it wouldn't be right), and have even relayed information (concerning Florida State's too-early deadline) to and from one of them. There are several who read this blog.

But it's always fun to speculate. I don't think you even know what gender or nationality I am....

Turning down offers is an important issue. I did not put any info about my progress on "2008 admissions profiles and results" yet, but I already turned down 2 offers for the good of other people. I do not know much about everybody but from the people I now most of them has 1 favorite choice. This 1 favorite choice is very important, as is discussed in the "it is not where you go it is who you work with..." thread.

I am not one of the top-class applicants, so I do not think that I will be blocking some other ones' favorite. But just as I did not hesitate turning down 2 offers, I would not hesitate to kindly request people on this forum or other people I know to turn down their offers or withdraw their applications if possible; because which group you want to work with is of utmost importance.

Does anyone know if turning down offers early actually helps out other applicants... to me it seems many schools have already made all of their decisions. For instance, Stanford responded to everyone in one day. So even if 20 of us deny their offer tomorrow, they're not going to admit anyone else would they?

quizivex wrote:Does anyone know if turning down offers early actually helps out other applicants... to me it seems many schools have already made all of their decisions. For instance, Stanford responded to everyone in one day. So even if 20 of us deny their offer tomorrow, they're not going to admit anyone else would they?

I'll still turn my offers down next week just in case...

When a single applicant says "no", it usually doesn't immediately mean someone else gets admitted (unless April 15th is close). We admit three times as many as we want (approximately), and if the turn-down rate is higher than we expect, we begin to go to the waitlist. This happens as early as March 15th. Of course, those on the waitlist are more likely to accept our offer. I'll bet that if Stanford got 20 turndowns tomorrow, they would get worried and add some from the waitlist.

There's not a lot of difference in saying "no" now, vs. two weeks from now. But as April approaches, it makes a big difference. After all, the waitlisted people might want to visit, and they need to know by the beginning of April.

Do schools usually offer visits to the students that they admit in the second round? I got into Washington about two weeks after most other people heard back. Their letter did not mention anything about a visit. I wrote an email asking when I could visit, but have not yet heard a response. (Granted, it's only been one business day.) They're one of my top choices, but it would be hard to get a good feel for the department if I never visit.

Also, why do schools offer admission in rounds? Did they spend the past two weeks deciding who else to admit? Was I bumped up off of a waiting list? Did they select all the students two weeks ago and then just sit on my letter for a couple of weeks so that they wouldn't have to fly me out? Or is this the type of question whose answer will forever remain in the shadows?

Just to add to the discussion, a certain top-ranking department (not physics or applied physics) offers fellowships to the exact number (~30) of students that it wants to enroll, and accepts but wait-lists (ranked) some students (~10) for the fellowship, and rejects the rest (~650). So, as soon as anyone declines an offer of fellowship, the fellowship goes to the highest ranked student on the wait-list. The admission director told us this during the weekend visit. It may be of interest to note that about 75% of the students offered fellowship at the first go last year accepted the offer.

With this fact in mind, I would like to make the following two points:

1. physics programs that have experienced high yield rates in past years may well have a process similar to the one i have described here.

2. the waitlist may be too small in some programs for applicants to easily know if it exists or not. So, Stanford physics and applied physics programs, for example, may well have a wait-list, unless the program administrators have explicitly denied its existence.

I doubt though that too many applicants are considering turning down offers from high-ranking programs this early.

Last edited by excel on Sat Mar 01, 2008 6:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Do schools usually offer visits to the students that they admit in the second round? I got into Washington about two weeks after most other people heard back. Their letter did not mention anything about a visit. I wrote an email asking when I could visit, but have not yet heard a response. (Granted, it's only been one business day.) They're one of my top choices, but it would be hard to get a good feel for the department if I never visit.

Also, why do schools offer admission in rounds? Did they spend the past two weeks deciding who else to admit? Was I bumped up off of a waiting list? Did they select all the students two weeks ago and then just sit on my letter for a couple of weeks so that they wouldn't have to fly me out? Or is this the type of question whose answer will forever remain in the shadows?

Every school is different. Suppose a small school wants 10 in the entering class, and historically has a 30% acceptance rate. They get 100 applications. So they accept 30, waitlist 20 and reject 50. As the 30 respond, if it looks like there will be less than 30% acceptance, they'll go to the waitlist (and usually invite them to visit--depending on how late it is). If we accept someone off the waitlist after April 1st, we generally don't invite them, unless they really want to visit quickly.

Why were you picked two weeks later? Suppose the above school finds 25 applicants that everyone on the committee wants, and 25 that they are less sure about. They can accept the 25 right away, and then spend another week or two looking more carefully over the rest, picking the best 5. So offers can be spread out a bit.

Just saw Excel's post. What s/he describes may be the procedure for top schools, that have a higher acceptance rate.

okay, I have $2 on credit card( ), and I requested Brown if they can buy a plane ticket for me and send me the e-ticket. They said no. I asked Wisoncsin, they said yes! Brown does not deserve to have me on thier dept. Does it?

Congrats dlenmn with John Hopkins!

When the heck is Maryland gonna send thier decisions? UCSD is dead silent. My hopes are dwindling from UIUC.

myass wrote:declined offers from UC Irvine and Wisconsin-Madison today. More to decline after I get reimbursed for my visits.

Oh, come on. Do you really think they won't reimburse you if you decline their offer? No place would dream of doing that---people like us would spread the word all over the Internet--they'd be blacklisted. State schools can sometimes take six weeks to reimburse people---why make those on the waiting list wait for that?

Sorry for confusion. I agree with you. They, of course, pay me whether I decline or accept their offer. What I meant by "after get reimbursed" means "after I visited them." I have decided my choice in my mind already, but I thought I should visit open house so that they might impress me to change decision. I'm not traveling for fun during open houses. I would rather not to visit them so that I don't have to file paper works for reimbursement which I am tired of doing for my travel in my research group. I declined wisc and irvine because I don't think I would choose them even if I visited their open house. Indeed, I didn't visit them.

I've got three schools I would withdraw applications from, except that I haven't got a single paper offer. So far 5 schools have sent me email offers, some with details, some obviously form letters but not a single school has sent me an offer via snail mail.

Without holding anything printed, I'm frankly nervous about turning down anyone. Last fall the department chair at my school offered me $16K to teach two sections of 'physics for poets.' He thought it was done deal until the dean learned I was also planning on taking a few classes and insisted it be converted a Masters TA ($10K) and I only teach one section.

ok so since I'm not sure if that's silly sarcasm or sort of angry sarcasm or not even sarcasm at all, let me just clarify that lots of people on this board are pretty anti-Yale at the moment, including myself, and I posted that because I know some people on here are going to be happy for Yale to get a wee bit of payback.

I just emailed to decline my acceptance to Davis. Here's what I wrote:

Dear Graduate Program Coordinator,

I am writing to decline your offer of admission to the physics PhD program at Davis.

I will send in the paper form once I have made my final decision on where to enroll, or sooner if you prefer. Suffice it to say Davis was my "safety" and I have been fairly successful: my top choice right now is the physics program at Berkeley.

neoslovakia wrote:whats the standard way to word an email turning down an offer?

standard? "standard?" Here is what I wrote:

Dr. xxxx,After intense consideration, I've decided that I won't be accepting Yale'soffer of admission. I will submit this decision officially in the coming week, but I wantedto let you know as soon as possible so that my financial offer can go toanother deserving student.Thank you,grae313

zxcv: just like you can't do anything until you are officially accepted, they can't do anything until you are officially declined. There is little benefit (some, but little), IMO, to letting them know unofficially but not officially. If you are sure, then you might as well do it officially now too.

I would send in the decision form they gave me, but I left it at school and I'm away for this week on spring break. I'm not sure why an email couldn't count officially, but I'll definitely send in the form when I can, especially if they need it so they can do stuff like take people off wait lists.

zxcv wrote:I would send in the decision form they gave me, but I left it at school and I'm away for this week on spring break. I'm not sure why an email couldn't count officially, but I'll definitely send in the form when I can, especially if they need it so they can do stuff like take people off wait lists.

oh ok, well spring break definitely is a higher priority My opinion is just that if someone lets them know now, but doesn't submit anything officially until April 14th, you might as well just wait until April 14th to let them know. Sounds like you aren't doing that, so cool

It was great meeting you, btw. What a fun visit to Seattle that was! I learned like six new drinking games...

It sounds like Davis took that as an official notification: they told me to send in the form when I decide for their statistics.

My primary conclusion from the Seattle visit is that I do not do enough partying with physicists! It's always a kick when a category like "bosons" comes up in a drinking game. It was nice to meet you, too... you weren't quite like I expected, but of course I'm going to refrain from comment on that . Just a reminder that you learn more about a person in 5 minutes of real life than 5 hours of reading their posts online.

Did you end up sticking around in Seattle? A number of us went downtown and checked out things like the Pike St market and the sculpture garden. Seattle is a nice city.

EDIT: okay twistor, bring your ass right back here to the forum( if you do not want to be kicked by me hehe)

EDIT2: Holy mother of God, I was away for domestic reasons, all u guys. I do not mind if people are pissed with me. Thats very normal behavior. I'm cool and everyone is cool and btw violet, I do not think we will end up in the same school and even if we did, I would always respect you as a friend. Don get me wrong!Quotin zxcv: " 5 min in person>>>> 5 hrs on the forum"

Last edited by cancelled20080417 on Tue Mar 11, 2008 12:39 am, edited 2 times in total.